Safe as Houses?
by Rumour of an Alchemist
Summary: One-shot. In an alternate universe with a 'Girl-Who-Lived' things took a sinister turn in the graveyard in Little Hangleton in 1995 at the end of the triwizard tournament. Sirius Black and some unlikely(?) allies try to pick up the pieces. WARNING! 'M' rated, Horror, hurt/comfort. Evil!Voldemort implied.


Disclaimer: I am not J. K. Rowling. I do not own Harry Potter.

Warning! This story is rated 'M' and identified as 'horror' and 'hurt/comfort'. It concerns the fallout of the end-of-triwizard actions of an evil!Voldemort.

Note: The following one-shot assumes an alternate universe where Lily and James Potter had a daughter, Chrysanthemum, instead of a son, Harry. Chrysanthemum became 'The-Girl-Who-Lived' much as Harry did in canon, and was sent to live with the Dursleys, where she had an unpleasant time (but not so nasty in canon, as Dudley and his friends 'mustn't hit girls'). Once at Hogwarts Chrysanthemum had a slightly easier time of it than canon Harry, at least in Potions classes, because Severus Snape found it more difficult to act unpleasantly to a _girl_ with Lily's eyes. The universe otherwise approximates to that of canon, up until the end of the 'Third Task' in the triwizard tournament, whereupon a reincarnated Voldemort in the graveyard in Little Hangleton came up with an idea other than 'give her her wand back and duel her' to show off to his assembled Death Eaters just how much he had 'conquered' her.

Further Note: Just to clarify, Sirius Black refers to his goddaughter (Chrysanthemum) as 'Chrissy' throughout this piece.

* * *

_Privet Drive, _

_Little Whinging, _

_Surrey._

_August, 1995._

_Dear Chief Warlock,_

_My niece, Miss. Chrysanthemum Jemima Potter, will not be attending your school in the forthcoming school year. I return your Hogwarts letter._

_Yours,_

P. Dursley.

* * *

Sirius Black was not a happy man. He'd been summoned back to wizarding Britain by a frantic message from that rat-bastard, Peter. Peter might have been a traitor and a low-life, but even double-dealing scum had their limits, and Peter had apparently passed his in a graveyard in Little Hangleton.

It was a pity that it had taken what that snake-faced tosser had done to Chrissy for Peter to find a few dregs of courage somewhere in the depths of his soul.

Peter had paid of course. Moments after Sirius had departed, his dramatic rescue done, Voldemort had worked out what had happened, just as Severus (at Dumbledore's instructions) was belatedly arriving on the scene. Severus had witnessed what Voldemort had consequently done to Peter – suffice it to say it had been highly unpleasant, as Voldemort was none too pleased at the time about his 'conquest' being snatched away from him. And after Peter's demise Severus had been the recipient of a round of 'welcome back' Cruciatus Curses from a dark lord in an already foul mood, which had fallen only _just_ short of torturing Severus into insanity.

Meanwhile, Sirius (albeit in disguise) had made the mistake of returning Chrissy to Hogwarts. Dumbledore had promptly locked Chrissy in the infirmary, and sent Sirius on his way – though not before Sirius had discovered that Severus had himself earlier tried to contact Sirius via Dobby to alert him to the situation, at the moment that Chrissy went missing from the maze. Tragically, orders which the headmaster and Chrissy had previously given Dobby had frustrated Severus' attempts to alert Sirius by this means to Chrissy's likely peril, but hearing of it had caused Sirius to revise his opinion of his once-hated foe.

Chrissy had been too traumatised to speak to anyone about what had happened in the graveyard for weeks after the event, with a glazed expression on her face most of the time. The men and women the DMLE and the Diggory family had sent to interview her at Hogwarts had got nothing out of her in several visits – although in the light of Madam Pomfrey's observations of the state of Chrissy when she arrived in the infirmary (however much the Diggory family might dispute the inferences the DMLE drew) they had concluded that, whatever had occurred, Chrissy had been as much a victim in it as anyone else. Even when Chrissy had been sent 'home' for the summer to the Dursleys, she'd hardly said a word during her first couple of weeks there.

It had taken the arrival of Severus Snape in Privet Drive (Dumbledore believing Snape to be his man, and Voldemort believing him to be his) to coax _anything_ out of Chrissy or to get her to do anything other than cry, stare, or mechanically eat and drink. Sirius had already long-guessed from the desperate message Peter had sent him that night of the third task, which had brought Sirius racing around the world – and from the scene when Sirius had arrived in the graveyard – _roughly_ what had happened to his goddaughter, but Severus had assembled the full, rather ugly, picture. Severus knew how to get people to talk about things, even if he could be a bit abrupt about it (though Sirius had been surprised how relatively 'gentle' by Snape standards that Severus was with a girl who the previous year had stunned him in the Shrieking Shack and was James Potter's daughter); and once Sirius and the Dursleys had some idea of the full extent of what had happened to Chrissy, and Chrissy herself was actually _talking_ about it, they could finally start to help her effectively – certainly much more so than they'd been managing prior to that point.

The peachiest part of the whole business was that the wizarding public in general hadn't the faintest idea what had actually happened. They knew _something_ had gone wrong with the third task, not least since Severus had somehow persuaded Voldemort to (anonymously) send Cedric Diggory's body back to Hogwarts so the Diggory family could bury their boy, and the wizarding public _knew_ too that Barty Crouch Junior had been involved with what had happened. (Once Sirius had Chrissy safely out of the graveyard, analysis of Peter's message to Sirius had revealed information sufficient to expose said Death Eater aspirant as he was readying his exit from Hogwarts, after failing to gain access to Chrissy in the infirmary). Barty Crouch Junior's involvement didn't arouse suspicion of particularly foul play in the minds of the wizarding public though (well: not foul play beyond that of a bitter escaped-convict out to try to wreck a prestigious event his father had organised) – and in the end, a triwizard tournament where _nobody_ died would have caused _much_ more of a public stir than one which ended with one competitor a fatality, another competitor too traumatised to speak, a discovered and swiftly dementor-kissed escaped prisoner previously believed to have been dead a decade, and no overall winner at all. The wizarding public just assumed it was the 'traditional' lethal nature of the tournament that was responsible for the end result, and were divided in being outraged that it had been revived at all and in making excited calls for another tournament to be held as soon as possible!

Albus Percival Brian Wulfric Dumbledore, of course, wanted Chrissy back at Hogwarts and making public statements about what had happened to _her_ as soon as possible, the cold-hearted bastard. To Dumbledore, trying to alert the public to Lord Voldemort's return mattered more than rebuilding the shattered psyche of a teenage girl. Any testimony Sirius tried to give about the aftermath of Voldemort's 'I'm back!' soiree would be almost certainly discounted and discredited by the Ministry – Sirius was himself an escaped convict, who would fabricate any crazed story to try and justify himself, as far as they would be concerned – and Albus had forbidden Severus to speak publically about what had happened unless Voldemort himself ordered him to do so, since Albus wanted Severus in position to continue to spy on Voldemort. It had to be, Albus insisted, Chrissy, who made the statement – Albus claimed that the wizarding public would believe her, and that it would halt the speculation going around as to Chrissy's trauma and Cedric Diggory's death being related. To the public mind, Cedric had clearly tried to do something 'ungentlemanly' to Chrissy, and she had gone crazy and killed him in desperate retaliation. With her simply having disappeared from view, opinion was currently sympathetic to her, tinged by a hint of fear that she might have become permanently 'unhinged' by the presumed Diggory attack upon her person.

Sirius himself (with more than a touch of bitter cynicism) doubted the wizarding public would believe anything Chrissy said at this point that resembled the actual truth – especially if it was bad news the Ministry wouldn't want to believe or for the press to be printing – and so did his best to resist his old headmaster's pressure, and to keep Chrissy in Privet Drive and as far away from the wizarding world as possible. That something so obviously awful had happened to Chrissy had shocked even the Dursleys into a semblance of decent behaviour towards her, and they were as firmly against Chrissy going back to Hogwarts as Sirius was. Unfortunately, Sirius couldn't be with Chrissy as much as he wanted – a swarm of dementors had shown up in Little Whinging recently (though they hadn't been able to approach the Dursley house), and after Sirius had hurriedly vacated Privet Drive, Severus had had to send a message to the Ministry for aurors to drive them off. Unwilling to take the risk that it was his own (till then) near-constant presence in Privet Drive which had somehow drawn the dementors, Sirius had had to retreat to the brooding Black family fortress in Grimmauld Place following that event, and to leave it to his cousin Andromeda and her husband, Ted, to keep an eye on Privet Drive, the Dursleys, and Chrissy, (and to keep him informed).

It was asking a lot of Ted and Andy, Sirius knew, but right now he felt he couldn't trust anyone _but_ family – and given such fine specimens amongst his relations as Narcissa and Bellatrix (the latter still in Azkaban, although for how long she would stay there now that Voldemort was 'back' remained to be seen) he couldn't even necessarily trust all of _them_.

* * *

Author Notes:

Albus Dumbledore, as of August 1995 in this particular alternate universe, retains his positions of Chief Warlock and Supreme Mugwump. Without being able to produce an 'eyewitness' to testify that Voldemort is back, he hasn't even attempted to go public with the news, and consequently hasn't been targeted in retribution with a tar-and-feathering campaign which results in the loss of those posts. Given that one Hogwarts student died during the triwizard tournament, and another clearly had something _horrible_ happen to her, the Ministry is readying attempts to 'intervene' at Hogwarts in the coming school year, and to send in Dolores Umbridge...

I assumed for the purposes of this story that Peter Pettigrew in this universe had some means (possibly Marauder related) to contact Sirius Black as an act of desperation once he saw the turn that events were taking in the graveyard in Little Hangleton. (He thought Voldemort was going to be resurrected and then maybe just frighten Chrissy a little, or at worst kill her quickly, not do _that_. Peter Pettigrew in this universe was good at being an exceptionally short-term thinker and was somewhat limited in his ability to understand the possible ramifications of his actions.)

Sirius Black executed his rescue with the assistance of surprise and probably some classic Marauder diversionary tactics to get everyone looking the wrong way before he came dashing in to rescue his goddaughter and get out. Peter may have possibly provided some unexpected covering fire.

The dementor presence near Privet Drive could have been coincidence, could have been Sirius Black related, or might have been as a result of someone like Lucius Malfoy slipping the undersecretary a bag of gold. The Ministry doesn't have any policy as such of going after a traumatised young woman who's not causing _them_ any problems at the moment (Amos Diggory going on about how is son is being wrongly villified is more of a nuisance to them).

This story is a one-shot.

Update: (15th January, 2013)

As one poster has reminded me, in canon, Sirius Black is of course in the vicinity of Hogwarts during the third task. For dramatic purposes I had assumed that in this universe he was out of the country. Rather than go back to rewrite a couple of paragraphs to 'correct' this detail to be more in line with canon, for now I'll acknowledge this as another difference from canon. I'll look at it again, though, if I ever come back to this piece.


End file.
